Monday, September 28, 2009

Can you see this? I can — and how lovely it is! Enjoy the colors of every season.

Pink

Not a color I've wanted to wear—tooinnocently girlish, and I'm not innocent,not a girl. But today the gnarled cherry treesalong Alabama Street are decked outlike bridesmaids—garlands in their hair,nosegays in their hands—extravagant,

finally the big spring wedding to splurge,and hang the cost. Each really wants to bethe bride so she can toss her bouquet until,unaccustomed, the gutters chokewith pink confetti that flies up and whirlsin the wake of cars going west,

Thursday, September 24, 2009

He asked me if he needed to use a colon or semi-colon. I was glad to tell him what to do. (It happens so seldom.)

I just discovered there is an entire day dedicated to the use of punctuation. September 24 is National Punctuation Day. The NPD Web site offers a recipe for the Official Meatloaf of the Day. (David would make mine with ground fake meat.) Make it in the shape of your favorite punctuation.

The Web site also offers suggestion on how to celebrate the day. A few ideas:

Take a leisurely stroll, paying close attention to store signs with incorrectly punctuated words.

Stop in those stores to correct the owners.

If the owners are not there, leave notes.

My family is well aware of my obsession with grammar and punctuation. There is a restaurant in Utah that will forever be remembered as "the one with the incorrect use of an apostrophe on the sign." (It also will be remembered for "very slow service from a perfectly nice waitress.") For the record, I did not leave a note or point it out to the manager. It was Mother's Day and he had many other pressing issues, like feeding all of the mothers in the room. I cannot speak to whether Valerie might have taken the matter into her own hands after our departure.

I cannot say the same about the note in the ladies room at the local movie theater.

Feel free to visit the Web site and see some of the punctuation errors caught on film and posted for all to see. Laugh with them — only because you might cry at the egregious errors.

And remember: you can do it! Punctuation is not rocket science. It's communication, and that's even more important. (Without communication, how could you learn about rocket science?) It is something we all can understand and use correctly so our communication is clear.

Monday, September 21, 2009

We will celebrate with Martian Poetry, an English poetry movement from the late 1970s and early 1980s. By looking at things with an "alien" eye, the poet can capture a particular perception of an item or idea, almost like describing something without using its name.

Monday, September 14, 2009

James McTeigue, director of "V for Vendetta" and the upcoming "Ninja Assassin," will direct "The Raven," a fictionalized account of the final five days of Edgar Allan Poe's life which sees Poe join the hunt for a serial killer whosemurders are inspired by his stories.

So, since we know the film is fiction, what was Poe actually doing for the last days of his life?

The Top 9 Things Poe Was Doing in His Final Days

9.Three words: Time-traveling Goth chicks.

8. Hid a clock under his nosy landlady's floorboards and enjoyed the show.

7. Lying in the cellar, passed out in a puddle of amontillado.

6. Trying desperately to remember how he ended up in the back of the stables, sans trousers.

5. Composed an ode to a football franchise of the future.

4. Bricked up his neighbor behind a wall, just for old time's sake.

3. Let's just say that if PETA ever finds out what he did to that raven, there's gonna be trouble!

2. Drafting a legal memo justifying pendulum-blade-lowering and

live burial as "outside the strict definition of torture."

and the Number 1 Thing Poe Was Doing in His Final Day...

1. Filling in for cartoonist Bil Keane during a particularly dark week of Family Circus.

(Now, go check out the Little Fiver lists available! There might be one with your name on it.)

Thursday, September 10, 2009

I have been devouring junk food for a while, and that's fine. I can gorge on chocolate as easily as Brussels sprouts, so consuming Stephenie Meyer's novels was very easy.

I do not mean to disparageTwilight, New Moon and Eclipse, all of which I devoured this past weekend. I loved every moment of these books. These novels are second to none in heart-beating romance. I shan't wax on about them now, but suffice it to say that I enjoyed them.

Then I stumbled across a quote from Madame Bovary and skipped over to Wikipedia for a reliable link to the novel. My, oh my, I do believe it could give Twilight a run for its money.

Gustave Flaubert's novel was known as scandalous in its time. When the story originally was published in 1856 (serialized in a magazine), it was put on trial for obscenity. Of course, that guaranteed its bestseller status the following year when it was published as a novel.

Monday, September 7, 2009

I know mine, and I rather adore them. Here's a poem dedicated to good neighbors.

Real Estate

How odd to look across the way and notethe Hymans, neighbors for a generation,are gone. Strange not to see a glimmer of lightin any window as I pass by, or Ida, bent and wiry,climbing her stoop with a bag of groceries,or tending the doctor, neatly dressed, asleep in his chairon the porch, his light dimmed by a succession of strokes.

I was shocked when Ida called to say she soldthe building: two stories high, smooth gray brick,solid as a bank. Then, one day, the big truck came,Thirty years gone. Just like that.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

I have decided that my calcium intake will include daily servings of ice cream.

Oh, I could go the pious middle-aged woman route and eat nonfat yogurt.Don't get me wrong: I like yogurt -- though, as a vegetarian, I have to carefully peruse ingredient labels for the wicked and terribly mis-named "kosher gelatin." (Who knew milk products could be so perilous?)

I could turn to spinach or dandelions, which have more calcium than milk, plus the all-important Vitamin K. (I think they're making it up, this Vitamin "K" — we all know vitamins stop at E.)

I could do a lot more wholesome things.

However, I won't.I like ice cream.I like eating it, and I like having an excuse even better.

Not that I need an excuse, mind you.It’s okay to do things just because they’re fun.

I saw a PostSecret postcard that inquired, "When did it stop being fun to jump on the bed?"I realized it hasn’t stopped being fun, but somewhere along the way it fell the by wayside, became less acceptable.We're too big, we might break the bed, we might hit our heads, we have to set a good example for children.

Oh, there are plenty of excuses, and none of them I’ve thought of so far really are good enough.

I've already corrupted my cats by showing them how to climb on the kitchen counter. Apparently, the idea hadn't yet occurred to them by the tender age of six months, and as I reached for the light bulb I was changing by standing on the counter, I watched the lights go on in their little brains and realized I probably ruined it for myself.(Not really, I later discovered, because they weren’t following my example, but that of their elder statescat Mao, who taught them what not to scratch, where to walk and what was delicious.)

So, when did ice cream stop being the "adult" way to get milk products?

Maybe it was when our metabolism matured and suddenly we couldn't skip lunch and lose that extra couple of pounds like we could in college.

More and more of my associates are asking for tiny slivers of birthday cake and "only a little" ice cream, or skipping dessert altogether.I have been known to be among them, but only when it's not good or not my favorite.I have met only a few desserts I didn't like, and only once did I taste a chocolate cake that wasn't good.(It was wedding cake, which was criminal.)

I'm neither obese nor malnourished.My physicians never have had cause to scold me too soundly for my eating habits — although I can go for a week without eating and not waste away.(I tested that theory last year under doctor's orders.I’m not if I should be proud or disturbed.) I don't glom on to too much unhealthy food.I have donuts once or twice a month at work.I drink diet soda only once a week or so.

But I'm not above the sweet-or-greasy, either: I can eat Fritos with the best of 'em, and cookies are not safe in my house.French fries are a staple for me, as are burgers (of the veggie kind).Chocolate is a major food group.So, while I don’t eat horrible food all the time, I give myself permission to eat what I want — within reason.

Thankfully, my exposure to "junk" food is limited because most convenience food is made with meat, which I do not eat.Oh, there are plenty of non-meat options at fast-food take-out joints, but I don't eat there.Most snack foods in the frozen food aisle are of the meat variety, which are easy to skip. I can find enough to get myself in trouble, though, and I have never met a cheese stick I didn't like.

I never want to be like one of the women I know who lost about 30 pounds on the Atkins diet — and spoke of bread with such sweet longing that I was embarrassed and thought maybe I should leave her alone with her memories of that decadent, delicious baked good.She denied herself one of the items in her life that gave her pleasure.

I don’t want to be the person waxing nostalgic about the food I love but “can’t” have.I doubt any of us at the end of our lives will sadly reflect that we didn’t eat enough kale.We might, however, regret skipping that last piece of birthday cake — and how sad would thatbe.

Be the person who finds a way to have what you want in a way that’s healthy and nutritious, or at least fun.